Well, think about it
I haven't hit up the front page in a long time, and I still have 30k thumbs in 90 days
So while they may get a lot, it isn't enough to be #1.
Miscarriage, as well as all of the other past #1 commenters have had to go to front page. Cleaveland steamer never even went to pony board and he was almost #1, so yea.

Take apart an hr a day or two hrs a day
Find content that isn't going to expire soon on front page, and go from there.
More time left on content = more people checking out comments = more people potentially thumbing up a funny comment

Miscariagge does bring up a point, with the hours left on content not showing
But yea
its not too bad
What miscarraige does now is try to post on my content a lot, since I post a lot, and I get front page a lot

Its all just generic reposts that were top content like last year lol
I don't care that I repost
I never cared about if a post was a repost or not, as long as I laughed
So I subscribe to that mentality